


coming home

by itsanizzyb



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen, More random instances of weaving magic than you can shake a stick at, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29190048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsanizzyb/pseuds/itsanizzyb
Summary: A post-script to Magic Steps, where Lark and Sandrilene spend an evening together.
Relationships: Dedicate Lark & Sandrilene fa Toren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	coming home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mistrali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistrali/gifts).



"Comas?" Sandry called, reaching the top of the stairs. She had taken care to set her feet heavily so that he could hear her coming.

No response was forthcoming.

She sighed and walked to Daja's – _no, Comas'_ – door, knocking on the doorframe three times in quick succession.

"Comas?" she called again.

"Yes, Miss?" Comas opened the door slowly, looking as if he was just about ready to jump out the window at the sight of Sandry, drawn up tall, in her finery. "Sorry – my lady."

Sandry shook her head at the formality. "None of that. You may call me Sandry. Or Sandrilene, if you absolutely must."

He blinked once at this, and she saw his hand twitch at the door as if he was going to slam it in her face.

Eager to avoid that, which would no doubt make him even more nervous around her, she hurried on. "I hear you're a thread mage." She tried to inject her voice with calm. "I was Lark's student once upon a time too. She said you could have my old room, if you like it. Would you like to come and have a look?"

Comas appeared to have lost his voice entirely. When he finally found it, he uttered, "Oh no, I couldn't possibly… your ladyship."

" _Sandry_ , please," she said, perhaps a little more sharply than was warranted, as he shrank back. She inhaled deeply. "Oh, will you please come and have a look? It's a lovely little room, and it's right next to Lark's workshop. I used to love listening to her weave late at night."

Apparently, Comas decided that it would be less embarrassing to just follow her, rather than have her wheedle him all day: he followed Sandry wordlessly.

"This was my room," she said grandly, opening the door. The afternoon sun was streaming through the windows, lighting the wooden floorboards golden. She sneaked a look at Comas as he stepped through the door at her beckoning. A shy smile spread across his face.

"It's… it's beautiful," he said.

_That's what I thought_ , Sandry told herself, in her head, so she couldn't possibly scare him with her sharp thoughts. "Shall we ask Lark for a hand to move your things?" she asked.

Comas looked struck dumb with terror at the very thought, which proved exactly how shy he was – Lark had never spoken a harsh word to him, and Sandry would wager her Narmornese inheritance on that.

"Perhaps not," she sighed. "How about you pack your things and I'll give it a quick clean?"

Comas shot off like she'd lit a fire behind him. She snorted under her breath.

"Goodness, Sandry, I didn't know you could _be_ so quiet and sweet," Lark said. Sandry rolled her eyes at her teacher, reaching over to run a finger through the dust on the windowsill. Not much there, but still. She'd like it to be perfectly clean.

"And still barely two words out of him," Sandry retorted. "Where-ever did you find him?" It was meant as a reflexive, rhetorical question, but Lark just pursed her lips and shook her head.

"I'll help you sweep," she said instead.

They tidied the room together in silence, working around each other. After that, Lark sent Sandry to pick up some things from the kitchens while Comas moved.

After a head-ruffling and cheek-pinching encounter with Dedicate Gorse, she had a basket of food for their dinner. She returned to find Lark rinsing a bucket of freshly-dug potatoes. 

"Let me," Sandry said, putting her basket of goodies on the table. At Lark's gesture of protest, she shook her head. "I _never_ get to do this at Uncle Vedris'. I miss cooking."

Lark shrugged, acquiescing. "Usually I make Comas do some of the dirty work, but I feel he's had enough scares for today… without your cooking skills adding to them!" she joked.

"Oi!" Sandry swatted at Lark half-heartedly. Lark laughed as she disappeared out the back door to Rosethorn's garden – the section that they were permitted in, anyway – and Sandry got down to business with a knife and a pile of potatoes.

They said little over dinner – Comas near-about fainted any time Sandry said anything, so when he asked for permission to leave in a strangled whisper, Lark nodded briskly.

"I'd like you to meditate before sleep," Lark told him. "Ten minutes, at least."

"Good night, Lark. Lady Sandrilene." He rushed away.

Sandry began gathering the dishes that they had eaten from for washing. Lark piled some cooked, uneaten potatoes into a dish.

By the time Lark returned from storing the leftovers, Sandry had completed the washing up. Just the simple chore made her miss Tris, Daja, and Briar more than she had thought possible. They used to fall over each other constantly, doing the chores every morning. She fondly remembered Tris grumbling as she'd shown Sandry how to wash each kind of utensil and dish, muttering about nobles and street rats.

They'd been just kids back then, oblivious to the true depths of their powers.

Even more oblivious to the hard decisions they'd have to make as fully accredited mages.

Sandry could still see, in blinding detail, the spinning that had unwound the Dihanurs. Her spinning. Her hands stilled on the plate she was washing as she took a deep meditative breath to ground herself.

She continued on washing with a vengeance, trying to scrub the memories from her mind along with the dishes.

She had just slotted the last plate back onto the shelf when Lark came back. "I've got to finish some habits for the scrying mages at the Water temple," she said. "Would you like to join me?"

Sandry nodded, trying to smile convincingly. As they passed the front window, she ran a hand down the curtains, feeling the familiar pattern of her magic in them, allowing herself a little pleasure at the way her spells had kept the moths at bay.

She sat opposite Lark's work chair, drawing a blank sheaf of woven linen to her lap. She could help with their construction, even if Lark would need to do all the hard work of spelling them later.

"You're still thinking on the unmagic, aren't you?" Lark said, putting her feet up on her footstool and drawing a pile of linen to her lap. She tilted her head at Sandry, not smiling, but gentle. "Sandrilene, you were put in a difficult situation, and you did what needed to be done."

Sandry shook her head. She didn't want to think of it like that. "I keep thinking I could have done something differently. At least saved-"

Lark held up a hand, forestalling Sandry. The thread in Lark's lap wriggled into her needle, and Sandry marvelled at her control as she always did. "You're an adult mage, with an adult mage's responsibilities now. You learned an important lesson – sometimes hard decisions are necessary. Comas needed you, and you saved him," she said, putting down her needle and looking Sandry in the eye. Sandry shifted uncomfortably. Usually being on the skewering end of Lark's gaze like this meant she'd done something wrong, not something right. "You've been looking after your uncle, you're teaching a student. You're even managing some of Emelan's international affairs, for Mila's sake. You're young. You're so young! I wish you could see that. But you've comported yourself with much maturity. I'm so very proud of you, Sandry."

Sandry ducked her head, unused to such expansive praise. Still, she couldn't shake the guilt of killing three people. At the very least, Lark's words told her that even the greatest mage she knew couldn't think of a way that Sandry could've saved Comas _and_ the mage, and the Dinahurs… No, they didn't bear thinking about.

Perhaps that was a good thing. If she continued to carry the horror of killing them with her, she would be more than careful with the way she used her magic, always.

She took up her needle and began tacking down the main side-seam on the future habit. The familiar motion relaxed her, and she let herself follow the needle in and out, in and out, in and out…

Even more soothing to her soul was the smell of home at Discipline: the tart scent of Rosethorn's drying herb bundles, the soft smokiness of the hanks of wool hanging in Lark's workroom, the crisp scent of the cleaning mixture Rosethorn made for them…

She thought of the screams of the Dinahurs as she killed them, and of the wide black eyes of the unmage, and her breath stuttered in her throat.

After a moment, she realised her fists were bunched into the fabric under her hands. She deliberately breathed out and relaxed her fingers joint by joint, finally picking her needle back up to tack down the other seam.

The day grew darker still and the rhythms of Winding Circle – the ringing of the bells, the chanted prayers, the drifting sound of someone scolding an apprentice for some forgotten chore – kept her mind occupied. Before she knew it, she had a red stitch dipping in and out of her cloth, in the pattern of the Winding Circle spiral.

She caught Lark watching her and smiled ruefully. "My thread knows where my heart is, even if my heart hasn't quite caught up."

"It is strange to watch you all grow up," Lark sighed. "I feel like yesterday you were barely taller than my hip and completely convinced you didn't have a whit of magic in you."

Sandry chuckled. "We were all rather headstrong, in our own way, weren't we?"

"Mila, yes!" Lark shook her head. "You were like little packhorses dragging us in different directions."

Sandry let the silence grow over them again, a comforting blanket. After a while, she raised her head to look for another colour of thread. Lark's hands were still on the habit she was supposed to be stitching.

"Do you miss her?" Sandry asked.

Lark jumped and flinched. "Rosethorn?"

Sandry nodded.

The fire flickered between them, casting skeins of light across Sandry's fabric. Below the Winding Circle emblem, she'd embroidered a fire-red pattern into the length of grey fabric. The warmth of the fire made her miss Daja – Daja, her sister- _saati_ , a smith mage who could cup a handful of fire and enjoy its heat as power rather than pain.

"Of course, I miss her. But she's needed elsewhere, for now," Lark said. She swallowed, blinking a few times in quick succession. "And there's much to be done here," she added, picking up her needle with decisiveness. "Rosethorn will be back soon enough."

Sandry doubted that – her connection with Briar had withered months ago, and it could span hundreds of kilometres if they were both trying. They were probably well and truly in Yanjing by now.

Lark was eminently practical, though, so Sandry supposed she wouldn't show how much she missed her partner. Instead of pointing out that Rosethorn and Briar – and indeed, Frostpine, Daja, Tris, and Niko – wouldn't be back for many moons, Sandry changed the conversation topic. "How is everything at Winding Circle? I do miss it here, sometimes," she said, with a sad lilt to her voice.

Lark managed a smile at that. "Everything is ticking along, as it should be. The Water Temple keeps forgetting to stock up on things, the Fire dedicates are always arguing. I will say that Rosethorn's sharp tongue is not missed by Crane," she said with a wicked grin.

Sandry laughed at that – their foster-mother and Crane certainly had quite the fraught relationship.

They passed the rest of the evening talking slowly of small things: Winding Circle gossip, tales of Lark's time travelling as a younger woman, Sandry's minor frustrations with the Duke's household staff. Lark's hands shuttled back and forth along the hem of undyed robe after undyed robe. Sandry stopped sewing after a while, when Lark scolded her gently for embroidering on what were supposed to be unembellished habits. Instead, she brought back some wool to spin from Lark's workroom. Under her hand, the action of the spindle took her way back, to her first lessons in Lark's workroom, to the early days of Discipline.

Finally, after winding metres of finely spun wool onto a spool and putting it down, she stretched her hands up to the ceiling and sighed. "I should be going," she said.

" _Now_?" Lark looked out the window. While they'd been passing the time, it had grown very dark; night-time dark. The stars glimmered quietly, and not a breeze stirred the eaves. Tris would _hate_ the weather tonight, Sandry reflected.

"Cat dirt," she swore. "I'll be okay," she added hurriedly. "I can take care of myself."

Lark frowned. "The Duke would have my head if I let you ride home alone."

Sandry sighed. She knew Lark was right, but she tried anyway. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him?" It wasn't convincing to either of them.

"You and I both know that His Grace is far too well-informed on your comings and goings for that to convince me even slightly," Lark informed Sandry. "I'll make up the bed in Rosethorn's room for you."

"Oh no, I can do that," Sandry said hurriedly.

"I suppose you could at that," she said, folding away the last habit, and standing up with her hands stretched high overhead. "I'll show you which linens you can use."

Sandry followed Lark to the closet, where she shook out some undyed cotton bedding. Sandry accepted the lot, commanding it to refold into a nice pile as she followed Lark into Rosethorn's room. Lark carefully removed the blanket and habit on the bed so that Sandry could lay the sheets down.

"I'll come back to say good night," Lark reassured her. "There should be some plain shifts you can borrow in the cupboard."

Sandry opened the cupboard, discovering a small pile of Rosethorn's gardening robes, and behind them, sleeping clothes. She donned a shift, instructing the threads to shake off any lingering dust, which they did with such enthusiasm that she sneezed several times before it settled.

That's what I get for being so nitpicky, she told herself ruefully.

Once she was in bed, the sheets and blankets carefully arranged around her, Lark returned, knocking on the doorframe and leaning upon it. "May I come in?" she asked.

"Of course," Sandry said, smiling up at her mentor. Lark knelt on the ground beside the bed, setting a cup of tea on the floor.

"This is for you, in case you have any trouble getting to sleep."

"Thank you, Lark," Sandry said, propping herself up. "Sleep well. And thank you again for having me to stay."

"Any time, my dear. Good night," Lark said, leaning over to brush a light kiss on Sandry's forehead. "I'm proud of you, alright?"

"Alright. G'night, Lark," Sandry murmured. As she rolled over, the sweet scent of Rosethorn's protective herb blend washed over her, lulling her to deep sleep.

Lark stood at the door, watching her ex-student for a moment. She smiled and said a small prayer to her goddess as she blew out the lamps and returned to her own bed.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this! It was a bit of a challenge - I'm not used to writing gen! - but I really had fun <3


End file.
